The present invention relates to a technology for storing a digital archive, such as a server, method and storage system for managing a volume constituting a data storage region provided in a disk-type storage device, for example.
There is a need to manage data such as electronic mail as a digital archive. As a device fulfilling this need, a jukebox device in which a plurality of recording/playback devices is installed, for example, is known.
More specifically, for example, in Japanese Patent Application Laid Open No. 2000-57672, when a write address that exceeds the recording capacity of one recording medium is designated by a host device 8a, writing following conversion of the physical address of a second recording medium to a logical address is accepted. The recording medium is an optical disk or similar.
As the recording medium disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid Open No. 2000-57672, a CD (Compact Disk), DVD (Digital Versatile Disk), or similar, may be considered. Hence, in a case where a digital archive is written to the recording medium in the jukebox device as in Japanese Patent Application Laid Open No. 2000-57672 and the digital archive is managed, the emergence of at least one of the following problems (1) to (3), for example, may be considered.
(1) a long time is required for writing;
(2) replacement of the recording medium by means of a robot mechanism takes time;
(3) in order to prepare for damage to the recording medium, the recording medium must be transported to a physically separate location and archived there.
As a method for solving such problems, a method that writes a digital archive to a disk-type storage device in a storage control system such as a RAID system rather than a recording medium in a jukebox device may be considered. It is thought that at least one of the above problems (1) to (3) can be resolved if this method is adopted. However, when the write destination of the digital archive is simply a disk-type storage device in a storage control system, other problems can occur, such as at least one problem among (a) to (c) below, for example:
(a) the write source device of the digital archive (host device, for example) is burdened with the task of having to manage the constitution of the disk-type storage device in the storage control system. This is considered a further burden when the constitution within the storage control system becomes complicated and the number of write-destination storage control systems increases;
(b) It must be possible to recover data even when the disk-type storage device is damaged; and
(c) Because there are several types of disk-type storage device, a trade-off between cost and performance exists, and hence the judgment of what kind of disk-type storage device the digital archive may be written to is difficult.